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Spock's World cover

Spock's World by Diane Duane

I read this book by placing a hold at my local library, it came from another library in my state

I liked this star trek book very much; I enjoyed the vulcan half of the book the most of any trek book i've read, but I liked the enterprise plot less than i did A Stitch in Time because each was like an episode of their respective shows and i like DS9 more than TOS. However, I like Spock a lot and this was a great Spock book (but TOS, so most of all a captain james t kirk book, which im blah on). The Vulcan half of the book spans the foundation of the vulcan civilization and i LOVE when a story has a large time scale chronicling the development of a civilization (like this localroger story about human colonization of the milky way). It begins with the creation of the vulcan solar system and planet, but i thought THE most awesome part was the chlorophyll and hemoglobin analogues for Vulcan were both copper based (instead of magnesium or iron) causing life on vulcan to have a gradient from plant to animal. Diane Duane did an amazing job writing an alternative biological and societal development for a hominid species and it's so RICH!!! I love when a book is dense and i really love a scientific narrative story and this was one I would love to own a physical copy of bc it was so good.

There were a few other parts of the vulcan species development i found so interesting, and this is them in no particular order. They evolved in a lush jungle garden world then had to adapt to a harsh hot desert planet after a freak solar flare, so they become warring tribes that select for beneficial mutations creating a eugenics warlord era. Since vulcans are a psychic species they didn't create language until shortly before the planet went desert and then rapidly adopted verbal communication in the new harsh environment. Lots of very funny things about Vulcan's giant volcano moon. Vulcans are incredibly tough physiologically like to a comical extent (several WEEKS without water leads to invention of water carrying). I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys biology/biochemistry and to all trekkies (especially the autists).